About

We are Jackie and Marco, a couple having been together for more than 25 years. We are both originally from Switzerland and fell in love with Southern California, when Marco did his MBA in San Diego in [...]

Happy landing in 2016

2015 turned out to be pretty ‘boring’ although challenging in some respects and there were not too many things worth blogging about.

The first 3 months were kind of stressful, with Marco having a full blown cluster with his headaches and us not having a place to live. In that respect this was not really a great time.

On the other hand we were in San Diego staying with our dear friends Alicia and Enrique for quite some time and then we also visited our families in Switzerland for almost a month (see separate blog posts) and we really enjoyed that.

Then we were lucky to find a furnished rental in Scottsdale, a very nice town home centrally located and close to everything. The summer was brutal but we survived it. Marco’s headaches were gone around May and we were working a lot, so time was flying and suddenly it was time to think about Christmas again and whether we should spend it with our families in Switzerland or enjoy the now nice weather in Scottsdale.

We decided that seeing our parents and families would be much more valuable than going for walks in the Arizonan desert. So we booked tickets for the three of us and took off on December 16th. Once the pre-flight hassle with finding a good connection, at an affordable price with an airline that allows in-cabin pets and getting Gizmo’s health certificate was over the trip itself went well. We flew Delta from Phoenix to Atlanta to New York (JFK) to Zurich and arrived on Andrej’s birthday at 10am. He picked us up and brought us to Marco’s parents home where we settled.

We introduced Gizmo to Unisha and were pleasantly surprised how quickly they got along with each other. They bonded well and after only a couple days they were eating out of the same bowl, using the same litter-boxes and sleeping in the same places. In the mornings and evenings they had their playtime and were chasing each other through the house. Metka told us that after we left Unisha was looking for Gizmo and calling him.

We once again were enjoying Mandi’s cooking very much and we spent some quality time with my parents as well. We saw our sisters and bothers and Marco played joker with Metka when ever time permitted. I was working nearby and heard them teasing each other and laughing whole heartedly, it felt very good. Also we finally got to see Andrej’s and and Astrid’s new home. They moved in summer and it was nice to actually see it, walk through the big yard and ‘meet’ their 4 chickens.

This time we even had quite a few nice days at the beginning of our stay where the sun was shining and the temperatures were very mild, only in our last week it was raining and gray.

Snow we only saw once for a couple of hours, in general it was more like April than December/January. But, we didn’t come for the weather, we came to see our families and we had a very good and relaxing time with them. We said goodbye again on January 12th and came back to chilly morning temperatures here in Scottsdale.

There was one thing though that overshadowed our visit: Silvio and Eveline had to put down their still young pure bread Rottweiler due to a tumor. She was a beautiful lively and otherwise healthy young dog and there were no warning signs or other indicators, so this was a big shock for everyone.

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Hi Marco and Jackie,
Happy New Year from Königstein/Frankfurt/Germany! I have it on my to do list to call Marco for almost one year now 🙂 I will eventually…..hope both of you are well. Hey, definitely let me know next time you come to Europe so we can meet.